With President Trump's recent seven-nation travel ban and the US Passport and International Travel: Travel Warning List, there is a significant amount of fear associated with travelling to certain countries. Primarily, these fears are tied to countries in the Middle East, Central Africa, select parts of South America and strangely even India. Travel bans will only lead to a skewed view of the world for Americans. The question every American must ask is whether travelling to these countries really that unsafe or is fear skewing their view of the reality

Donald Trump’s travel ban on certain Muslim countries is getting as symbolic, absurd and bizarre as it can get, even if court after court in the federal states seems to be decisively overturning his repeated executive orders. Even while there have been widespread protests in the US against the travel bans, the Trump establishment's persistence in the face of judicial orders and public protest, including international outrage, seems to be hiding more than the apparent narrative. For one, he cares a damn. Second, he is playing to the gallery. His own soap opera, reality TV gallery, pandering to the divisive hate politics simmering below the failed American drama, the lowest common denominator, like many leaders of his ilk, across Europe and the rest of the world today, including in India. Surely, it is not an exclusive America phenomena, nor is it immaculate in its conception. The history of the world is replete with the human race being played around by Trumpist icons, to push hatred as a cornerstone of their political scaffoldings. He does not really care a damn for the popular protests in the cities, mostly on the coast, among the intelligentsia, or on the university campuses, or, within the entrenched Washington establishment. It is precisely because he basically did not win from this largely educated and liberal democratic constituency. Though, the conjectures are as open as they seem. Like the lingering wounds simmering in the depressed and divided contemporary American society.

That Hillary Clinton got the popular vote in hugely higher numbers is a fact that the world knows, so does Trump, despite his usual ‘fake news' discourse which tries to inject seeds of doubt into the most obviously realist of bitter realities. That Clinton lost, due to the unique American presidential election pattern, whereby he overwhelming won the states, though he lost the total vote count. That is why the Democratic ‘blue' was only on the fringes in the great American map, while the vast countryside in state after state, including what were perceived as historically Democrat strongholds, turned starkly Republican red.

It was this vast sea of Red, where Trump's symbolism is yet again succeeding and striking a vicious but emotional chord, when it comes to the travel ban, or the rhetoric against ‘Muslims' or terrorism, as much as the macho, sexist, racist, xenophobic, and antiimmigrant campaign run by the Trump camp, including those who are now positioned in the most powerful positions in the new regime. Indeed, some of them seem more right of what used to be the Ku Klux Klan, as shown so vividly in movies like ‘Mississippi Burning', or in the fictionalised catharsis of Tarantino's famously and classically violent movies. In more ways than one, the beginning of the sinister story starts from here, closeted within the inclusivist, triumphalist or white supremacist slogans of ‘Make America Great Again’, or ‘America First

It might seem surprising, but almost 52 per cent of educated white women voted for Trump – and this could include the young and upwardly mobile. Hence, the theory, that most ‘millennials’, the young aspiring, progressive and educated, even ‘socialist’ were hardened and committed Bernie Sanders supporters, who did not vote, or voted reluctantly for Clinton, might just miss the mark.

Besides, it is a great irony, that the same voter population which voted for Barack Obama for two consequent terms, and overwhelmingly so, and in even those states which voted for Trump this time, should suddenly turn so diagonally upside down. That is, it seems a misnomer that the so-called ‘post-racist’ society suddenly turned ‘racist’. Indeed, it seems as complex and dynamic, as it appears, and not as true and transparent as the mirror seems to be showing.

First, the huge and empty American countryside, had been left to its unhappy fate by the Washington establishment and all other economic and political elites – that is precisely what the ground reports say, and that seems the empirical basis of the huge discontentment which prevailed in the rural hinterland, especially in the midwest and other areas which seem to hate multi-culturalism. Second, the white working class, too had turned decisively marginalized and angry at the raw treatment given to it by successive regimes, considering, for instance, all crucial economic and human development index indicators in terms of education, health, quality of life, and social security, proved that these groups were way down below the mythical ‘Great American Dream'

Third, racism and supremacist xenophobia runs like a hidden, unexpressed stream, skin deep, in the 200 plus history of this young nation of immigrants, especially in certain geographical areas, even while large sections of the uneducated white, or lowincome group whites, blame the AfroAmericans, the Latinos, the immigrants, including people from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, for their social and economic plight. Slavery is a bad faith which America carries in its conscience. Some might even aspire for its regressive return. Trump successfully triggered these fears and phobias, and a false mythology of erstwhile greatness, and promised a utopia to the margins which will never happen. At least it seems so, as of now.

And, fourth, looking up at the many Trump towers and his vast empire of real estate and other wealth, it is finally the longing for capitalism’s downward filter theory which is working in the mass consciousness, and, certainly, not the desire for equality or social justice. They think only a capitalist who is an ‘outsider' can get them up the capitalist ladder, whereby they have been dumped by the ‘insiders’ of successive regimes in the garbage can of history

In reality, it is all turning out to be a tragic, unresolved riddle, which is going round and round in dangerous spirals. And, that is why, the racist anger is boiling over, and that is why the Trump symbolism.

For one, much of America seems poor in basic lessons in geography, or in history, considering they are so cut-off from the rest of the world, that they create wars all over the world and remain so sanitized and clinically untouched, that isolationism, solitariness and individualism seems to be the mechanical social creed, and that many seem to carry pronounced misconceptions, or deep-down guilt, or superpower ambitions, about the rest of the world. The Indians attacked, were, for instance, termed middle-eastern, in some instances. There is no real distinction being made in terms of non-while people, nor a real attempt at understanding various cultures and histories.

This has been a phenomena post 9/11. That large numbers of Indians are successful, hard working and rich, or upwardly mobile, and contributing to the American and globalised economy, turns them into scapegoats of the false branding of immigrants or ‘outsiders’ for the ‘bad luck’ or bad economic condition of the locals. Indeed, Sikhs were often mistaken as Muslims, and the phenomena run across the non-white kaleidoscope. Surely, it is there for all to see; it is not a hidden phenomenon.

It is so easy to blame the Mexicans or Indians for what is essentially a failure of American capitalism. If there are no jobs, or if jobs, industries or services are outsourced on abysmally low salaries across the developing countries, it is for American big business and the thickskinned profit industry to introspect. Surely, the immigrants are not to be blamed for the economic crisis vast unemployment, low income among vast sections in a brazenly rich economy with huge disparities, or the stark absence of social security driven by big capital in the US. It is the empire itself which must take the blame.

And, yet, that has been a sinister ploy. It is so dangerous that an entire society is getting polarised. The fears were always dark and uncanny. Even before the elections – because the seeds were sown by the Trump campaign, and so blatantly

There were always recorded and undocumented evidence of racist attacks, subtle or overt. The graph seems to be only rising in recent times. Indeed, this is one diabolical symbolism which might be disastrous for a society which prides itself on multicultural and immigrant talent and knowledge systems, and which has its origins in the very idea of migration and integration.

Truly, the whole world might be pitching one against the other, in bad faith as a public spectacle, to score political victories of sectarian ideologies. However, as the attacks on Indians and others prove, it all turns inwards finally. This is because of all violence, in thought and deed, finally, hurts the collective and the individual. The nation-state itself is in danger. And it takes a long time to heal.

Surely, for Indians in the US, or Indians in India, as much as refugees in the West driven to a tragic exodus by war made in the West, or immigrants looking for work here or there, it is perhaps the most difficult time in the era of globalisation. The travel ban might not succeed in the final instance. However, the purpose is different. To inject the seeds of hate. And that is the fear which is the key.

The writer is a journalist and academic based in Delhi.